Britain Lags Mississippi in Per Capita GDP

A UK Times story by Douglas Carswell, one of the leading advocates of Brexit, notes that America's poorest state, in terms of personal GDP, has surpassed Great Britain's economy by that measure:

Over the past 40 years, those southern US states that have embraced free-market reforms, such as Texas, Tennessee and Florida, have done remarkably well. Helping Mississippi adopt similar reforms would almost guarantee something similar. Frustrated by the inability of those who run Britain to change much for the better, I was attracted to America.

Yes. Carswell left Great Britain so he could have a better chance of making a difference. He now heads a free-market think tank based in Jackson, where I grew up.

Carswell paints this success as a lesson for Britons, but many Americans, myself included, would do well to reflect on what he reports as an "appetite for improvement" here that is lacking over there.

Carswell goes on to explain why things are improving in his adopted home:

Image by Steve Punter, via Wikimedia Commons, license.

...In recent years the state has used its freedom to make bold free-market reforms. Last year it introduced the largest tax cut in its history, slashing income tax to a flat 4 per cent from 2026. Only a dozen or so US states have a lower personal tax burden. An average middle-class family with a household salary of $50,000 might pay total federal and state income taxes in the region of 15 per cent, or $7,676. In the UK, the equivalent rate would be 23 per cent.

In 2021, Mississippi deregulated the local labour market, passing a universal occupational licensing law. In many US states a dentist or accountant or even beautician who is qualified in one state has to undergo a new professional examination process in order to provide their services in a different state. In Mississippi, that is no longer the case. If licensed in another state, you now get fast-track approval here too.

To this advocate of laissez-faire, these seem modest reforms, but they are in the right direction. And they are certainly nicer to hear about than the progressive suffocation of the economy nearly everywhere else that we Americans risk becoming used to.

At the least, Carswell would appear to be buying us time to make the cutural change necessary to make freedom once again a sustainable proposition.

-- CAV